Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Writing a trilogy: The Brides of Waterloo

Welcome to Louise Allen, Annie Burrows and
Sarah Mallory who produced Harlequin's trilogy of historical romances, The Brides
of Waterloo.

Sarah
Mallory writes -

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﻿﻿

Sarah Mallory

﻿

In the
summer of 2012 Louise Allen, Annie Burrows and I put our heads together and came
up with a trilogy of romances set around Waterloo. The premise was that our
heroes were battle-hardened soldiers and we needed a regiment for them, so we
decided to try something a little different. We moved away from the glamour of
the cavalry or rifle regiments and settled for an artillery unit, a troop
called Randall's Rogues, a bunch of misfits who just happened to be excellent
artillerymen. They had been given a last chance to redeem themselves and had
been brought together into a crack unit under the command of their no-nonsense Colonel,
Lord Randall. As Annie puts it, "A dirty dozen in breeches"!

Once Annie,
Louise and I had put together our initial proposal, and mapped out three stories,
we were ready to approach Harlequin. The
RNA conference was at Penrith that year and Louise and I met up with
Harlequin's Senior Editor for the Historical line, Linda Fildew, to pitch our
idea in person. Linda was enthusiastic,
took it away to think about it and later that year it was accepted with plenty
of time for us to write the books and for Harlequin to plan it into their 2015 schedules.

Then the
hard work began, we actually had to write the books. This involved lots of collaboration, mainly
by email (thank goodness for the internet), although Annie and I did meet up in
Waterstones, Manchester, where we re-enacted our battle scenes using the cruet
set plus any available napkins and a sugar bowl!

﻿

Annie Burrows

Louise drew
up a spreadsheet for the characters and timelines for the three books, Annie
kept a note of the Dramatis Personae and I, well I just wrote! We managed to schedule our work so that we
were all writing our books at more or less the same time, which meant we could
swap notes and ideas while the stories were fresh in our heads.

I bagged
Randall as my hero and had the honour of writing the first book in the trilogy
while Melanie and Annie chose two rakish majors, hard-as-iron Adam Flint and
the unscrupulous seducer Tom Bartlett respectively. Fortunately in Brussels at the same time are
three strong and resourceful women who prove themselves to be more than a match
for our Rogues!

We decided
the Rogues should be in blue uniforms, like Mercer's Battery, the artillery
troop that inspired our story, and Annie also came up with a motto (Semper
Laurifer, which means Always Victorious). My heroine, Mary, who finds herself at
loggerheads with Lord Randall, translates it as Never Fails – To Infuriate! We also gave
the Rogues a regimental mascot, a large and very hairy stray that attached
itself to the unit and was tamed by Louise's hero, Major Flint. The breed we
chose is known as a Bouvier de Flandres, large dogs weighing up to 120 pounds,
and looking very fierce, though actually they are very gentle. Ben, or Dog
(you'll have to read our books to find out how he came by his names!) features
in all 3 of our stories, playing a particularly important role in Annie'sbook, A
Mistress for Major Bartlett.

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Louise Allan

There was a
certainly amount of crossover with the timelines. A Lady for Lord Randall starts some time before Waterloo and
continues after the battle, whereas Annie's book and Louise's A Rose for Major Flint actually commence
once the battle has ended. We therefore
have each other's characters wandering in and out of our stories. That was a
challenge, but great fun, too.

It is
important, when collaborating on linked books, to have confidence in your
fellow authors, to trust their judgement. Louise and Annie had already collaborated on
an earlier series for Harlequin, and I had known both authors for years, so we
were pretty confident we could work together. We all threw in ideas and were not afraid to
speak up if we disagreed (which happened very rarely). When we needed to use each other's characters
in a scene we shared that segment, to make sure we were in agreement and
towards the end of the process we read each other's manuscripts to make sure
the stories and characters did not clash. Our characters were created and they evolved,
squabbled, laughed, cried and fell in love against the backdrop of Waterloo in
1815. Their authors worked, sweated and laughed a lot in the process.

We are all
extremely pleased with our trilogy and we hope the readers will enjoy reading
these three books as much as we enjoyed writing them.

Sarah
Mallory - A LADY FOR LORD RANDALL – pub Harlequin May 2015

Annie
Burrows - A MISTRESS FOR MAJOR BARTLETT – pub Harlequin June 2015

Louise Allen
– A ROSE FOR MAJOR FLINT – pub Harlequin July 2015

Louise Allen is working on her 49th
historical romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon and her 44th, Scandal’s
Virgin, won the RoNA Rose Award 2015. She focuses on the late
Georgian/Regency period and also writes historical non-fiction. To the Field
of Waterloo: the first battlefield tourists, will be out on Kindle shortly.

﻿

Annie Burrows has been writing light-hearted
Regency romances for Mills & Boon since 2007. Her first book, His Cinderella Bride was the top seller
in the historical line that year. Subsequent books have gone on to win the
coveted Reviewer's Choice award from Cataromance. Her books have charmed
readers worldwide, having been translated into 19 different languages

Sarah Mallory has written over 20 historical
romantic adventures for Harlequin Mills & Boon and won the RoNA Rose Award
in 2012 and 2013 for two of her titles. She also writes as Melinda Hammond, and
her latest time-slip short story And the
Stars Shine Down is now available on Kindle.

Authors'
photos – courtesy of Harlequin Mills & Boon.

Thank you,
ladies for this most interesting post and good luck with your publications.

The RNA blog is brought to you by,

Elaine
Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to write a piece
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